Far from the blockbuster lemmings
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UI students can go to just about any movie theater to see the latest blockbusters, but to catch larger independent films and a few cinematic classics, the IMU’s Bijou is there.
“[The Bijou] offers the community and the university films they’re not going to be able to see anywhere else for as far as Des Moines,” said Jeff Winter, a member of the cinema’s board of directors. “We’re offering people a kind of culture they can’t get anywhere else on campus.”
Choosing the films
The Bijou’s Board of Directors meets one Sunday each semester to pick the following term’s films. The Bijou also operates during the summer. Each member pitches one current independent movie and one “classic,” an older film that has usually been recently restored.
Winter said the board selects approximately 12 newer films and six classics for each semester.
Board member Zane Umsted said that although the board hasn’t yet met to pitch movies for fall, he is excited about the possibility of bringing in some of the movies that appeared at the Sundance and South by Southwest film festivals.
“The fall usually has some of our strongest films because of the high-quality, small summer movies that fall by the wayside in June and July, when they are forced to compete at the box office with mega-blockbusters,” Umsted wrote via e-mail. “Those are usually the ones that we try to pick up and help them find a well-deserved audience.”
The mark of a good film for the Bijou is one that has “received a lot of positive critical acclaim and has gained interest within the film community via film festivals and art-house screenings in bigger cities such as New York and Los Angeles,” he said.
Cooperative work
The Bijou also works in tandem with other university organizations, presenting screenings of prominent films made by UI students and teaming up with campus radio station KRUI to show music films made by indie bands. Every Halloween, the Bijou shows the campy classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, encouraging moviegoers to dress up and providing audience participation packs complete with rolls of toilet paper and noisemakers.
“The Bijou is important to Iowa City because it allows the community to combine cultural awareness with filmic entertainment,” Umsted said. “You won’t see many films at the Bijou where you just sit back and turn your brain off, but most Bijou films will leave you with fodder for discussion after the credits have rolled.”
Here’s a partial list of films shown at the Bijou Theatre during spring 2009:
Waltz With Bashir
Che
The Betrayal
Ballast
Beautiful Losers
Last Year at Marienbad
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